


Driftless

by BrokenBones (Hikarinimichitasora)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Get in the Fucking Robot, M/M, Pacific Rim - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 15:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikarinimichitasora/pseuds/BrokenBones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk cannot drift. He cannot maintain a mental link with anyone for long enough to pilot a Jaeger. But that’s only until Pike conscripts two of the best pilots to partner up with Jim, determined to halt the apocalypse in it’s tracks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driftless

**Author's Note:**

> Written as an attempt to just play about with this universe, this fic will eventually become McSpirk.

Jim sagged against the machinery, his mind reeling. He’d never experienced anything like that before. He tried to think about something else other than the throbbing pain in his head. His nose dripped blood and his eyes stung. His breath was coming in sharp pants.

“Get him out of there before he has a brain haemorrhage!”

He could hear Pike barking orders from the command and felt the strong arms of his partner trying to disengage him from the unit. He wanted to tell them that it wasn’t their fault, that Jim just couldn’t help chasing the rabbit down and down into the depths of his mind, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

Uhura’s mouth was a thin line as she finally got him out of the machine. Her eyes were filled with tears but she didn’t cry. Instead she put her arm under his arms, half-dragging him out of the cockpit and into the hangar bay.

Jim immediately felt hands on him, stripping off his armour, forcing him to lie on a stretcher. He could hear Uhura reeling off what had happened. They had engaged the neural handshake but something in her mind had triggered something in his own and down into darkness they’d spiralled until Jim had woken himself up.

He knew she’d seen it all. The destruction of San Francisco, the destruction of his home. The starvation and disease that had followed. The rise of a terrible dictator who had not only finished the work the kaiju had started, but also nearly got Jim in the process.

She didn’t comment on it though, even when pressed. There were some things that stayed within the Drift. Jim heard someone question Pike about his ability to pilot.

“I don’t give two damns who we get. We’re going to find someone who is compatible with this kid.”

He wanted to say thank you, but he felt his vision swim, tinted red, and was gone.

* * *

 

When San Francisco fell, Jim Kirk had witnessed it. He had seen the kaiju, a mean motherfucker with teeth the size of trucks. He’d watched as it devoured cars and buildings. It had been strangely abstract at that point, the destruction. Like something he’d seen on a film or on TV. When it tore through the Golden Gate Bridge like butter, Jim had just stared in awe and disbelief, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

But when it entered the city itself, that was when Jim began to realise what was happening. He watched as the thing started to chase people. And yes, there had been people in those buildings, in those cars, on that bridge, but they had been far away. He hadn’t watched as their spine snapped, hadn’t felt their blood rain down onto his face, splatter along the ground as their dying screams echoed and echoed and echoed.

* * *

 

 

“There’re two new pilots for you to do the test with,” Pike announced the next day. Jim was tucked up in bed. He was wearing an eye patch as one eye still wept blood, and was on a strict diet of pain medication and various rations until he got his strength back. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the situation. He was wasting resources, putting lives at risk, while he just say here, unable to fight, unable to find a partner that could support him.

“Look, me and Uhura were compatible and we didn’t work. You’re just going to have to move on, sir, find someone else-“ he began but Pike cut him off by raising his hands.

“One of the ones we’ve shipped in, he’s an anomaly. He brings nothing into the drift. He has an almost complete control of his emotions and memories. If there’s anyone you would be compatible with, it would be him,” Pike explained. Jim frowned, not sure if he liked the idea of the drift being such a one way street.

“If that’s the case, why have you brought two?” he asked. Pike shrugged.

“He passed the basic tests so we figured it was worth a shot,” he explained. Jim snorted and settled back into his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“What are their names?” he asked, wondering if it would help any when their minds rejected him that he knew who they were.

“Spock and Leonard McCoy,” Pike replied. Jim guessed that the one without the last name was probably going to be his hot shot new partner. Usually only those who thought way to much of themselves discarded one of their names.

“Well, I guess I’ll meet them sooner or later. They gonna arrive after I got rid of this eye patch?” he asked, hoping that he wouldn’t have to meet anyone new while he looked quite this beaten up. Pike just smirked at him.

“They are already here.”

* * *

 

Jim had not been lucky enough to have escaped. His bike had been totalled quickly. His escape route blocked by a falling building. He had run, wildly, hoping that the beast remained behind him. Its grey scaled skin melded with the buildings until Jim jumped at every skyscraper on the skyline that was rapidly disappearing around him.

Around him people screamed and prayed and begged for their lives. He heard a crash behind him and turned. It was there. Right. There. He could see its ugly snout, its inhuman eyes zeroing in on the humans before it. It reached down, taking a struggling woman in its grasp. She beat her fists against his talons, screamed for others to help her, kicked her legs, but then she was nothing but a steady river of blood dripping down over the creature’s skin, down its front, onto the ground.

Jim took a step backwards, feeling its eyes focusing in on him. The only one who wasn’t running. He froze; he didn’t know what to do. Could he outrun it? Was he going to get eaten? He took another step back, almost involuntarily.

Jim suddenly felt himself knocked to the ground by a blast so large it took a few moments for the sound to reach his ears. When it did it was so loud that it left the ringing, roaring, deafened. His body hit a wall, hard enough that his head smacked against it painfully. He sagged to the floor, trying desperately to get to his feet again.

Whatever they had used had drawn the monster’s attention away from him, if even for a short while. It was bleeding, purple luminous fluid running down its back, creating puddles on the floor. Jim splashed through them, hissing when he felt it burning through his shoes like acid. He stumbled, desperately flinging himself towards shelter as bomb after bomb shattered through the street behind him.

* * *

 

Jim leaned against the wall in Pike’s office, his posture casual as he took in the two new pilots. One was tall, his frame seeming rather more rakish. He had long, elegant fingers and his skin was pale in a way that made it seem like he hadn’t seen daylight in a long time. His eyes were dark and unreadable, his expression muted as he barely even acknowledged Jim beyond a somewhat quizzical raise of his eyebrow when Pike had introduced them. He wore military uniform, crisp and smooth along his frame.

Beside him was almost a complete opposite. Dark hair dishevelled, hazel eyes flashing with annoyance already, the man drawled out his responses to Pike’s questions with a curl to his lip that clearly said he thought that this was bullshit. His clothes were simple; jeans and a white t-shirt that looked like they’d been through the wash more than was healthy and a sheepskin pilot jacket thrown over the top against the Alaska cold.

“Listen, I’m more than happy to work with the kid, but I’m not getting into one of those things and fighting monsters. Damnit Marshal, I’m a doctor not a Jaeger pilot!” The untidy man’s voice rose a little and Jim sighed, pushing off the wall and taking a few steps forward.

He felt the attention turn to him again. “Look, I don’t know why you bothered to come here if you didn’t want to fight kaiju. Just go home if you don’t want to participate in what we do here,” he said, tiredly running a hand through his hair. His eye throbbed behind the eye patch and he tried not to think too hard about how much it was going to hurt to go through another episode with a new partner.

“Yeah well, I got nowhere else to go anymore,” the Southerner said, folding his arms across his chest and looking away. “Goddamn kaiju took everything when they attacked Los Angeles. All I got left is my bones.”

“A rather dramatic way of looking at it, Doctor McCoy,” the smart one said and Jim guessed that by process of elimination that this person must be Spock.

“Enough. You’ve got combat assessment in the morning before we’re going to attempt a neural handshake between whoever reaches the highest compatibility scores,” Pike said, his tone leaving no room for argument. Jim straightened and gave the other a salute, Spock matching him. McCoy just gave an almost floppy wave of his hand in the direction of his forehead before he stalked out.

“I apologise for Doctor McCoy,” Spock said when the other disappeared beyond the bulkhead. Jim raised his eyebrows. “He does not enjoy flying and the helicopter ride to the base left him shaken. I assure you he will perform whatever duties he has assigned admirably.”

Jim saw Pike’s expression change from stern to somewhat amused as he leaned back in his chair. He looked at Jim as if to say _good luck_ and dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

* * *

 

The days that followed the eventual defeat of the monster was a haze of pain and terror for Jim. Unable to walk as his legs were a raw, bleeding mess, he had crawled into an alleyway and hidden. The looting started soon after and he twice had to fight off others who were trying to steal the clothes off his back.

When the adrenaline finally wore off and exhaustion took him, he had slept lightly in the chilled night, afraid to enter a building unless it collapsed around him. He had woken hungry in a blinding rush of agony.

Looking down at his legs, he could see that they weren’t healing well. The purple blood of the monster seemed to be staving off infection, but also preventing the skin from scabbing over as it should. Clogged blood still oozed down the sides of his legs.

He made his way out of his alleyway, hoping that he might find food. Surely the military would have sent in aid for them by now. He barely managed to get into the sunlight before he heard boots on the pavement.

“Got another injured one here,” he heard someone say. He reached out to them, hoping they’d help him. Hoping that he wouldn’t have to fight. They lifted him up and Jim felt light-headed against the hunger.

“Put him with the others. We’ll wait for Kodos,” his rescuer said. Jim licked his lips, hoping he was going to be able to thank those who captured him, but his vision swam and he sank into darkness.

* * *

 

Jim sat in the mess hall, pushing mashed potato from one side of his plate to the other. He hadn’t got an appetite. He was already trying to sort through his head, frantically getting everything in order for yet another person to go on an Alice-in-Wonderland wander through it.

It wasn’t that he underestimated Spock’s abilities, more that he knew his own level of fucked up well enough.

He didn’t look up when a tray pattered down in front of him and someone lowered themselves to the opposite chair with a grumble. He continued to poke at the mashed potato with a plastic fork and wish that it would disappear off his plate.

“You gonna eat that?”

It was McCoy. Of course it was. Jim pushed his tray towards the other. There was still some chicken left, wrapped around the bone that the other might want. McCoy gave a little moan of delight as he added the extra rations to his plate.

“Haven’t had food like this in years. They don’t feed half as well on the research posts as they do out here on the front lines,” he said, starting to tears chunks of chicken off the bones with his fingertips and jam them into his mouth.

“You know that I’m not going to be able to work with Spock, don’t you?” Jim asked, looking up at McCoy with honest, open eyes. The other raised an eyebrow as he chewed his food, hands held somewhat delicately over his tray.

“There hasn’t been anyone that Spock hasn’t been able to drift with yet, kid. Don’t go thinking you’re special,” he said, smirking slightly as he picked the bones clean.

“I don’t think you understand. I can’t drift with anyone. I’m incompatible,” Jim ground out, feeling raw. McCoy chuckled, pushing away the bones and wiping his hands and mouth on a napkin.

“Darlin’, you haven’t seen what me and Spock can do yet. Spock’s a genius when it comes to compartmentalising everything and I’ll tell you, I’m a damned good doctor. So what, you’ll have a few mishaps and I’ll have to patch you up… And I can do it a darned sight better than the butcher that put your eye back together last time too,” McCoy frowned, reaching over and snagging at the eye patch to pull it off. Jim pulled away but he was left dangling from his face instead.

“Goddamn, they didn’t do a good job. Wait for me to finish this up then let me take a look atcha,” he said and his hazel eyes seemed warmer, greener, brighter. Jim looked away, feeling like a sullen child all of a sudden.

“I’m James Kirk. Friends call me Jim,” he said. McCoy grinned at him across the table, raising his cup of water in an almost mocking toast.

“Leonard McCoy.”

* * *

 

Turned out it wasn’t so much a rescue as a culling. Jim had realised that pretty soon in when they weren’t being given food or water or medical care. He wondered what the UN was doing, that they were allowing this to go on. The gang that had them was talking about a ritual killing to appease those who had attacked them, or the scarcity of food left in the city, or the fact that they couldn’t have people just dying _anywhere_ as it’d spread disease.

Jim’s legs continued to bleed onto the grass as he passed in and out of consciousness, his stomach churning with hunger, his head pounding with dehydration and his heart thumping with fear that the next time he passed out he might not wake up.

Then the shots began. The screams. The killing. And it wasn’t a monster this time, but a man with a balaclava and a machine gun and Jim couldn’t escape. Looked down the barrel of the gun that was to deliver his death and couldn’t muster up anything other than a dull grin.

It was then that the military came.

* * *

 

McCoy’s hands were gentle on his face, tracing over the lines of his cheek bone as the other shone lights into both of his eyes. It was blinding and Jim felt his eyes water, but when the other pulled away he found he missed the human contact. It had been so long since someone had touched him other than to hook him up to machinery that he’d forgotten what human skin had felt like against his own.

The other gently tilted his head back, making his neck stretch as he stared up at the ceiling. A few moments later a pipette appeared in his field of vision and a few drops fell into his eye. He blinked rapidly, trying to let his head drop forward but finding that the hand prevented it. A tear ran out of the corner of his hair and into his hair.

“Don’t be a baby,” McCoy said, his other hand reaching with a cotton swab, dabbing at the area around Jim’s eye.

“Yeah well, you could have given me some warning, Bones,” he replied, gritting his teeth as whatever it was started to sting. The other huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.

“Bones huh? Not the worst nickname I’ve been given,” he replied, his hand finally dropping away as he reached for another eye patch. “Should have cleared up that redeye by tomorrow mornin’.”

Jim nodded and got to his feet. He was grateful but he didn’t know how to show it. He could feel his stomach tying itself in knots because he _liked_ McCoy, even in the short time he’d known him, and knew that after everything went wrong tomorrow, he was unlikely to stay on the base.

“Get some sleep, Bones. You’re going to need it if you’re going to take me on in combat tomorrow,” he said, and forced a grin onto his features. McCoy rolled his eyes, clearing up the medical supplies he’d been using and dropping them into a bin by Jim’s bed.

“Yeah, yeah, hot shot. I’m going to laugh when Spock kicks your ass into the ground tomorrow.”

* * *

 

The treatment for the kaiju juice, as Jim called it, was long and tedious. Skin graft after skin graft on his feet and legs and still the flesh was ugly and shiny looking. Spider webs of scars ran up from the soles of his feet to his knees from where he’d stumbled into the pools of toxic sludge that the beast had emitted from itself.

He did not comment on the pain. He didn’t feel he had the right. Others had suffered worse. Others had lost loved ones in the fight. Others had lost their lives. He had merely lost his ability to walk, and even then, only temporarily.

It was in the hospital that he made friends with some of the others who had been on leave as he had been. Chekov and Sulu had both been holidaying and Jim knew them vaguely from command school. Chekov had been uninjured, but Sulu’s back had been broken by falling debris. Night after night Jim heard Chekov whispering things in Russian when he thought everyone else was asleep, and night after night Sulu replied in his own stilted attempts around breathing apparatus.

They had been there a month when Pike arrived, a briefcase in hand and an opportunity on his lips. Jim had listened silently to the proposal. To develop a weapon strong enough to fight the monsters, should they appear again, to create machines that could be piloted.

“Will Sulu be able to walk again? If he is agreeing to being in this robot?”

Jim’s heart had shattered into a thousand pieces at that question, so innocent and honest. Pike had heaved a sigh and looked at Jim as he answered.

“It is a possibility.”

* * *

 

Jim tried to relax as they suited him up. The combat test had been a mission in patience as Spock had pummelled him into the ground so often that it was embarrassing. The other was stronger, faster and far more agile. On the other hand, Bones had been pretty terrible. He had put up a decent fight, but it was clear that he had no intent behind his strikes and Jim had easily beaten him. The mismatch had been so clear to Jim that he was surprised when Pike just waved them on through to the neural handshake.

He felt his suit around him, constricting his movements to the point of near claustrophobia. The metal spine attached to his back he knew it was time to face the music.

He stepped out into the hangar bay and saw Spock and Bones already waiting for him, suited up like himself. He tried not to think too much about what their faces would look like if he failed this and instead tried to concentrate on putting one heavy foot in front of the other.

“Which one’s yours then kid?” McCoy asked, looking around them. There was a bright gold one, flashy as hell with the words ‘Inwented in Russia’ jokingly sprayed along the leg that belonged to Chekov and Sulu. Across from that was the one that Uhura would be taking, most likely with Gaila, a beautifully sleek green powerhouse that ran as smooth as a dream. But between them all was the gigantic silver Jaeger that Jim knew was his.

Across its chest was the title ‘The Enterprise’, gleaming in dark lettering, but Jim had never called her that. The Enterprise had always been his Silver Lady, standing tall and mysterious above him, never letting him take control of her or touch her in the ways it mattered.

“The Enterprise,” Jim said, gesturing to the Jaeger with a heavy hand. Bones whistled and Spock’s head tilted to the side.

“I followed the development of this Jaeger. It is made from the scavenged metal of San Francisco, is it not? I believed it was to be painted red, in memory of those who lost their lives on the Golden Gate Bridge,” Spock said, turning to Jim with his brow raised. Jim fought back the surge of memories, not needing them near the surface of his mind at that moment.

“She’s better off silver,” he said firmly, looking up at her with an expression of grim determination.

“Isn’t red meant to be the colour of leadership or some such jazz? You know, like the Red Ranger in Power Rangers?” Bones chipped in. Jim took a few steps forward, turning his head slightly to address the other’s question.

“It’s also the colour of blood. My Silver Lady is better off as she is. Silver.”

The rest of the way to the Jaeger was made in a slightly uncomfortable silence. Jim stood on the lift for a long time, trying to work out what he was going to do if this all went wrong. It would be best to leave the base. To free up the Enterprise for someone else to take the reins of. Perhaps even Spock and McCoy if they could?

Stepping into the cockpit again was like stepping into both his favourite dream and his worst nightmare. He’d personally customised her, adjusting her, fine tuning her, until he knew every crevice of her body. He’d though that it would help, but in some ways it appeared to have made everything worse.

He stepped up to his place on the pads and locked in his boots. Spock stepped to his left, taking up the other dock. McCoy adjusted their headgear for them, making sure that they were firmly engaged.

“Well, I’m going to step out for a bit and let you two do your thing. Don’t go nuts and wreck the hangar bay while I’m in it, alright?” he warned. Jim gave him a weak smile and Spock just raised a single eyebrow. McCoy waved it off and stepped out of the cockpit.

They ran through the procedures together without speaking and Jim felt the butterflies in his stomach get worse. He gritted his teeth when he heard the countdown to the neural handshake begin. He focused on his breathing, knowing that he just had to let it flow through him. Like water. Easy come, easy go.

He felt it engage and expected the bombardment of images he usually received from the other. He was shocked to find nothing though. An empty space. It wasn’t like being alone in his head, more that there was a specially cleared area just for other people to inhabit in Spock’s mind. It was disconcerting and Jim couldn’t make anything of it. He felt it start to slip away and tried to claw at it, try to keep it for a little longer, tried to explore it.

He felt it tear and suddenly he knew he was doing it _again_. He’d attacked the other’s mind though, tearing through those carefully constructed walls that Pike had put so much faith in and they were tumbling down and down, chasing that white rabbit into the destroyed remains of San Francisco.

He came to with blood all over his face, his eyes wide and dry as though they’d been bulging in his head. He could feel someone was disengaging him from the machine and he turned to look at Spock. The other was wild-eyed, his hand raised to his nose and staring at the blood that dripped from his fingertips.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” he croaked, blood filling his mouth. He saw Spock’s expression shutter and the other stalked off without another word. Jim sagged against the medical team, wondering if there was even any point in trying it with McCoy.

He was about to call Spock back, to ask if they could try again, that he’d be better this time, that he wouldn’t do something that stupid, when he heard the alarms sound.

“Everyone to battle stations! Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Gaila, get your asses into those robots! We’ve got a category four headed straight for Hong Kong!” Pike’s voice blared through the intercom. Jim broke free of the med team, pushing his way out into the hangar.

“Enterprise team. You’re grounded until further notice. McCoy, get them both patched up. I want them ready to try again once the other teams have handled this attack,” Pike barked and Jim’s hands clenched into a fist.

Outside the cockpit McCoy stood there, looking at him with eyes filled with… no it wasn’t pity. It was understanding. Like the other knew that this was Jim’s worst nightmare come true and wanted nothing more than to take it away but knew that there was nothing that could be done to make it better.

“Come on, kid. Let’s get you cleaned up.”


End file.
